Mar 25, 2013 8 Questions With: Paul Cunningham
We met Paul Cunningham through Adam Moyer of Knockaround, who had been exploring a brand collaboration with Paul’s company, Leather Head Sports. His company conceives, designs, and handcrafts beautiful LEATHER HEAD™ footballs, basketballs, medicine balls, rugby balls, and LEMON BALL™ baseballs, all made to order. Paul founded his company from an intense passion and career in sports and baseball. By bootstrapping his company, Paul has accomplished a tremendous amount by working efficiently, focusing on measured growth, and being uncompromising on quality. As a result, he has a strong private label, wholesale, and direct business, garnering press and fun collaborations, such as the Jeep X USA Basketball collection with our Imprint team member, jeffstaple. We recently captured a peek into his work day and inspiration points. Listening to him talk about leather makes it clear that he is a true old world craftsman of the raw material and takes great pride in creating distinctive, finely crafted American leather goods.
What has been the most rewarding part of founding Leather Head Sports?
It’s incredibly gratifying to take something that existed only inside my head and turn it into a successful business.
I’m very proud of the praise that my work has received, but honestly what I find most rewarding is the fact that I’m creating American jobs. I have five employees now, and I want to make sure that they love coming to work every day.
What does your work day look like?
It’s quite chaotic. Between reading and responding to e-mails, answering the phone and ordering supplies, I always try to find time to sit down at my sewing machine and do what I really love, which is sewing footballs.
What have you learned as an entrepreneur so far?
Not so much what I’ve learned, but more of my general philosophy is that you have to treat people well. Everyone is special. If you love your customers, your vendors and your employees, and treat them as individuals, then the business will take care of itself.
What are you currently working on?
I’m working on about ten different projects, but the two that excite me the most are designing a soccer ball, and a baseball glove project.
Baseball gloves are my first love. I got my start in leather work as a baseball glove craftsman, so it’s an object and business that I know really well. I’m going to be bucking a trend and taking a bit of a risk by having my baseball glove designs manufactured overseas. It’s quite simply a matter of economics. Ball gloves are so labor intensive to produce, that I will go out of business trying to make them here. On the other hand, by making them overseas, the profits will enable me to hire more Americans and provide better benefits to my growing group of employees. The irony is that I’ll be doing more good for people here in America by having my baseball gloves made elsewhere.
Where do you find inspiration?
I’m throwback kind of guy, so I find inspiration in old things. I love puttering around at flea markets and in antique shops. My design sensibility is minimalist so I love simple, functional things.
Beyond that, leather is what gets my creative juices flowing. Leather comes in such a wide palette of colors and textures, that I have an bottomless well to tap into. I make sports equipment, but what I’m actually doing is using the sculptural aspects of sports equipment to showcase beautiful leather.
As a kid, what did you want to be?
The only thing I ever wanted to be was the center fielder for the New York Yankees. I’m a baseball guy, born and raised in Cooperstown, NY, the home of baseball. I played baseball competitively through college, and spent my summers working at the research library of the Baseball Hall of Fame. After college, I got a job as the photo editor for Major League Baseball in Manhattan. By then I’d given up my dream to play for the Yankees, so I was really happy to be working for MLB. I held that job for over a decade when the love of baseball gloves and leather began to consume me.
By 2008 I was ready to leave baseball to go to work for a small baseball glove company as their Sr. Baseball Glove Craftsman. In July of 2008 the All-Star Game was held at the Old Yankee Stadium. My responsibility at the event was to set up for the team portraits in center field. To me, it was really poetic that I finally found myself in center field at Yankee Stadium, just as I was about to leave baseball.
I remember sitting on a bench next to Yankee great Mariano Rivera, looking up at the stands and asking him questions about his baseball glove.
What is your favorite post-work destination?
My favorite thing to do after work is sit around my shop drinking beer with my people. I love it here. and I love my people. I especially like it when my wife can find the time in her busy schedule to join us.